


Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground

by celeste9



Category: Primeval
Genre: Action, Angst, Apocalypse, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-10
Updated: 2014-11-10
Packaged: 2018-02-24 22:03:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2598050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/pseuds/celeste9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jess used to enjoy reading apocalyptic fiction, but that was before. (Apocalypse AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Clea2011](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clea2011/gifts).



> Happy birthday to clea2011! This fills 'apocalypse' on my hc_bingo card, which I swear she asked for. *g* Also for 'I walk through the valley of death' on my Primeval bingo card. Thank you to rain_sleet_snow for the beta! All remaining mistakes are of course mine. Title from The White Stripes.
> 
> I didn't select the major character death because there is nothing explicit and no names are named, but please be aware this is an apocalypse fic, so there are allusions to character death and general unpleasantness.

Jess used to enjoy reading apocalyptic fiction. At the ARC everyone had teased her about her romance novels, but really when she wanted to curl up on the sofa with a book and a glass of wine, her first choice was generally some kind of YA novel about a dystopian future or zombies or anything like that. It was the sort of thing that seemed vaguely possible and yet still far-off, which she found appealing to imagine. There was just something about seeing people struggling to overcome dangerous situations, using their own smarts and toughness and skills even when they thought themselves nothing out of the ordinary. Perhaps it resonated with her because of the ARC. Anyway. Those were her favorites.

But that was before.

In the end, it wasn’t the anomalies that destroyed the world. It was people. People dropping bombs on each other, fighting, shooting, killing. The anomalies only made it worse.

The ARC had tried to make a difference, the same as they always had, but the truth was they simply didn’t have the resources or the personnel, not any more. Anomalies continued to open but the world as they had known it was already gone. Jess thought perhaps if it had only been anomalies to the past, they would have stood a chance. But once the future predators had started to come through...

People more important than Lester had decided that Becker was needed elsewhere, so he left (along with the vast majority of his men). Jess hadn’t heard from him in months. She didn’t know if he was alive or dead. Becker had always seemed indestructible, bouncing back from whatever mess he got himself into, and Jess hoped his luck still held strong. She hoped... She hoped that if it hadn’t, that it was cleaner than what had happened to so many of their friends.

But Jess didn’t like to think about that.

Now she was with Emily. That was good. Jess had never liked being alone. Sometimes she thought they should try to find other survivors, make a little group, like Emily had had when she was traveling through the anomalies, but Emily said this was different. She said they couldn’t, that it wasn’t safe. She said they couldn’t trust anyone but each other.

Jess listened because Emily was good at surviving.

They never went far from the ARC. Or what was left of it, anyway. That was Jess’ decision. 

“But if we’re gone, how will Becker find us?” she said.

Emily never said that that was stupid, but Jess could see it in her face. Emily thought Becker was dead, but Jess couldn’t believe that. She would believe he was still alive until someone proved that he wasn’t. 

They stayed mostly in the wing of the ARC where the beds were located. It was largely intact and they had carefully cleared it of creatures. Jess had devised a makeshift alarm system that would (hopefully) alert them of intruders, human or otherwise.

They had also cleaned it. Jess might have cried a little, scrubbing blood out of the floors on her hands and knees. If Emily had noticed, she hadn’t said anything.

“Do you think this is how Matt’s future started? What if we were wrong, what if we didn’t stop it after all?” Jess asked one night, while they sat cross-legged on the floor and ate canned peaches. 

“I don’t know,” Emily said.

“Did you ever see it? Matt’s future?”

“No.” Emily paused, looking into the distance. “He told me stories, though. It... it could have looked like this. At the start.”

Jess wasn’t sure why she had asked. It didn’t help, having Emily confirm the possibility that they had truly destroyed the earth, once and for all, that their struggle during convergence had been for nothing.

“It wasn’t habitable, though, was it?” Jess said. “They had to live underground. We can still live here.” In parts of the world, anyway. The parts untouched by nuclear warfare. “We can fix it.” Once they stopped the creatures. Once it was safe to walk the streets again.

Emily smiled a little, like she was trying to humour Jess, but it wasn’t very convincing. “Of course.” 

Jess chewed on her lip. “Do you think someone is trying to… to restart? The government? Do you think maybe Lester…”

Lester had sent his family to stay with his parents in the south of France. It was supposed to be safer there.

It wasn’t.

By that point travel outside the country had become nearly impossible, but Lester had tried anyway, and Jess had learned never to bet against him. Not long after that all communication had gone out and then… Anyway, Jess didn’t know what had happened to him. She liked to think that when society started anew, Lester would be right in the centre of it. 

“I don’t think anyone cares about us, Jess,” Emily said in response to Jess’ question. “I think if any officials survived, all they care about right now is staying that way, the rest of the world be damned. Starting over is up to us for the time being.”

Jess looked down at her hands. Emily had never been a very reassuring sort of person, as she preferred practicality and the truth to sentiment. Optimism had always been Jess’ area.

She wished it wasn’t so difficult to stay optimistic. 

-

It still felt strange to walk through London and have it be so empty, so quiet. London was supposed to be loud and too crowded, the streets packed with cars and the pavements packed with people, business executives walking to work and tourists stopping to take pictures and parents shopping. There was supposed to be shouting and conversing and people talking too loudly on their mobiles.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. London felt dead and grey, Jess and Emily’s footsteps sounding out in the silence. Jess thought of her collection of The Walking Dead graphic novels, the black and white images of the world post-zombie apocalypse, and thought that that was what London felt like. A city bleached of colour and energy.

“We need to make a supply run,” Emily had said yesterday when they took stock of what was left in the ARC’s small kitchen.

A supply run meant leaving the relative safety of the ARC, but it was eminently necessary, so here they were. Every time they went out they needed to go farther to find what they needed. They weren’t the only ones left in the city, empty as it seemed, and staples went quickly. 

Jess stopped at a noise, Emily doing the same beside her. Jess clutched her gun and they kept still and alert, watching. After a few moments, Emily nodded at her, and they moved on.

This was why they tried to keep out of the streets. You could never be certain what would find you, out here in the open. 

Although the EMDs were useless now, with no way to keep them charged, the ARC was still stocked with the sorts of weapons Becker had always preferred. Jess thought Becker would be proud, if he could see her now.

Though perhaps Abby and Connor would be less so. Jess and Emily had taken a ‘kill or be killed’ attitude where it came to the creatures. If she was honest, Jess had never been particularly compassionate towards them anyway, not after what she had seen them do. She had always seen the terrible in them where Abby had seen the beautiful. She was sorry to kill them, she was, but she loved her own life, and Emily’s life, better. 

Emily reached out to grab Jess’ sleeve and Jess froze out of reflex. Wide-eyed, she stared at Emily.

“Look,” Emily’s lips formed, though no sound came out.

Heart thumping in her chest, Jess looked towards where Emily indicated.

That was when she saw the future predators.

Two of them, only a block ahead, nosing at what appeared to be the long-dead carcass of a theropod, roughly the size of a velociraptor. 

Jess tried not to breathe. Their best defense, their only defense, really, was not to be seen. One predator would have been challenge enough, but two? Jess had good aim but she wasn’t that good.

Even Becker had been afraid of the future predators, and Jess would never forget what it had felt like, being hunted in the ARC with Lester.

Jess could feel her palms sweating and she tried to get a firmer grip on her gun. If she dropped it…

One of the predators was creeping closer. It was barely yards away from them now. Jess tensed her muscles, readying herselfto run.

Then the wind blew, making the broken, half-open door of the building beside them crash on its hinges. 

The noise drew the attention of the creatures. They caught sight of Emily and Jess.

“Run,” Emily said, and Jess ran.

She ran, feet beating against the pavement, dodging debris, her hair flying behind her. She and Emily came to an intersection and without needing to communicate, they turned in opposite directions. Jess didn’t know if one of the creatures was following her, or if both of them were, and she was afraid to look.

She could hear it, then, and see it in her peripheral vision as it came up on one of the buildings, ready to pounce on her. She stopped and steadied her gun, firing. 

It jumped, and Jess dodged it, but she lost her weapon in the fall. It clattered away from her and Jess wanted to scream. She made a desperate grab, knowing the creature was going to be on her in a second, and then she heard the sound of a machine gun spraying bullets around the street. 

_I don’t remember Emily having a machine gun,_ she thought, ridiculously, as she scrambled away, keeping low to the ground. Jess grabbed hold of her gun and took refuge in a doorway, covering her head.

After only a short while there was silence again. Jess didn’t want to look. She hadn’t heard any screaming but the creature still could have -

“Give me your hand,” a voice said, and it wasn’t Emily’s, but Jess still recognised it. Only it couldn’t be, it _couldn’t._ Could it?

Jess opened her eyes and raised her head.

Becker looked different than he had when Jess had seen him last. His hair was longer and he was in need of a shave. There was a scar coming up from beneath his shirt and winding up the side of his neck and he was carrying enough weaponry to practically be a one-man army. 

Jess just stared at him. “You seem taller,” she said, and then thought, _Stupid, stupid, stupid!_

But Becker actually laughed, and he kept his hand outstretched until Jess took it, helping her to her feet. “Perhaps it’s because you’re on the ground,” he said, and then looked at her shoes. “And not wearing heels.”

“Heels are incredibly impractical in an apocalypse,” Jess informed him, and then squeezed him in a hug. Becker’s tac vest dug into her uncomfortably but it was still easily the best hug Jess had ever had in her entire life. 

Becker held onto her tightly, his large hand stroking the back of Jess’ head, and Jess wanted him to never, ever let go.

Then she remembered. “Emily! Oh my God, Emily, we have to help her, how could I be so selfish? We have to find her!”

“No need, I’ve rescued myself, thanks very much.” 

Jess sprang away from Becker and ran to engulf Emily in a hug instead. “Oh, you’re brilliant, I’m so sorry.”

“That’s all right,” Emily said, and she was smiling, though her face was splattered with blood. When Jess raised a finger to touch her cheek, Emily said, “It isn’t mine.”

“Okay. Okay, good.” Jess stepped back.

Emily moved in front of Becker. They looked at one another.

Then Emily said, directing her statement to Jess, “I suppose it’s good you didn’t let me convince you to leave, after all.”

When Jess finally smiled, it was filled with relief.

-

That night, Jess came upon Becker as he was in the midst of changing his clothes, replacing his own, dirty from long use and travel, with a spare uniform left in the ARC. She found herself thinking back to a time she had done so before, stopping frozen in the doorway while he struggled into civvies.

That felt like such a long time ago, now.

This time Becker heard her and stopped, tossing his black shirt onto the floor. He didn’t say anything, just looked at her.

Jess came into the room. She stood close to Becker, reaching her hand out to trace the scars on his skin. There were a lot of new ones.

She felt a puckered bullet wound in his shoulder, and what looked like the remains ofa stab wound in his gut. That scar was raised and ugly, as if it had been stitched poorly, and Becker trembled when Jess touched it. There were patches of rough skin on his left forearm, as if from shrapnel, tiny scars like several little pieces of something had had to be removed. The worst one was the scar she had seen peeking out from beneath his clothing, the long line stretching from his chest to his neck. Lines. She could see now that it must have been from a creature, some animal that had slashed him across the chest, the worst of it catching his neck as well. Jess trailed her fingers over the marks.

Becker caught her hand, holding it still.

“Sorry,” Jess said, eyes lowered.

“Don’t,” Becker swallowed. “Don’t be sorry.”

Jess raised her eyes to his. “I missed you,” she said.

Becker was silent.

“Emily wanted to leave, and I knew she was right, but I couldn’t… I thought if we stayed here, that you could find us. I thought, you couldn’t be dead, you couldn’t. And if I left, it would mean I had given up on you, and I could never do that.” Jess closed her mouth and stopped talking. She must sound so silly, foolish and naïve.

But what Becker said was, “You were the only thing that kept me going. I knew I had to get back to you. You kept me alive, Jess.”

It should have sounded ridiculous, the sort of romantic crap people only said in movies, but Becker looked so sincere and intent, and Jess’ heart was racing in a way that was different from when she was on the run.

“Becker,” she said, and then decided words were pointless when she felt the press of Becker’s lips. 

-

Later, Becker said, “We should get out of London. I only came to find you, I left a group of my men in Aldershot.” 

“At the army base?” Jess asked.

“Yeah, but we won’t stay there. I’ve heard… I’ve heard rumours. Places where it’s better.”

Jess had always hoped it must be better somewhere, and it felt easier to believe now that Becker was here, now that one wish had come true. “I trust you,” she said.

Becker’s smile was small and tight and not altogether real. “I’m not sure that’s the right thing to do.” 

“I am,” Jess said, and kissed his mouth. “Emily will come with us. She’s wanted to leave for weeks.” 

Jess was ready to leave now, too.

-

They found a car with a working engine and Becker siphoned a full tank of petrol from nearby cars along with filling a couple of canisters they’d found in the boots of other abandoned vehicles. They loaded up with weapons, food, and other supplies.

Jess stood for a moment in the street, trying to remember London as it used to be, a city full of promise. 

Becker stopped beside her, his hand resting on her shoulder. “Ready?”

Jess nodded. There wasn’t anything left for her here.

The three of them got into the car, Becker in the driver’s seat. He started the engine.

No one looked back. 

**_End_ **


End file.
